MAY IT PLEASE THE PALATE: The Sexiest Diet Alive

This week’s People magazine features their annual winner of the “Sexiest Man Alive.” This year it’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, former wrestling star, and now the highest paid actor in the world. Sure, Rock is a nice piece of chiseled beefcake - but that’s not what earns him a spot in a food column.

It’s his diet. To maintain his Herculean physique, Rock begins his day at 3:45 AM with a run and never looks back, alternating workouts with up to seven meals a day. Breakfast is a sirloin steak, roasted potatoes, and scrambled egg whites; three hours later it’s grilled chicken and white rice. His daily diet, as told to People, includes over three pounds of lean meat, 14-16 egg whites, a pound and a half of roasted potatoes, three cups of rice, oatmeal, peanut butter, and a couple of large salads with no oil.

A variation of his diet, published in Muscle & Fitness magazine, had the Rock consuming over three pounds of cod, along with supplements like casein protein and omega-3 fish oil.

Sweets? The Rock boasted on social media, “The last piece of candy I had was a pack of Twizzlers in 1989.” (He has an astonishing 71 million Instagram followers, which puts him in the top ten, but still behind the likes of Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.)

One man decided recently to emulate Rock’s diet and workout routine. Blogger Mark Webster determined to eat and exercise like the Rock for thirty days; his experience was reported on fivethirtyeight.com.

Webster consumed over 5,000 calories per day – over ten pounds of food – including over 500 grams of protein. This was spread over seven meals that took him about three hours a day to prepare and consume. (He got a break when he learned the seafood market would steam his cod for him.) Webster carried his prepared meals wherever he went - one day taking three of them to an all-day business meeting. At the end of the month he’d spent $1262 on food without eating out.

Another two hours a day was devoted to Rock-like workouts, an hour of cardio and an hour and a half of weights per day, with one day of rest. This burned around 3550 of those daily calories. As for treats, his “only succor was a daily sweet potato.”

The result? At the end of the month he had gained exactly one pound, but reported a significant gain in muscle mass and strength (as measured by his weightlifting ability). Webster also gained size in his arms and upper legs, and was otherwise leaner. He felt “amazing” at the end of his experience, losing the aches and pains attendant to being 37 years old, and dropping his resting heart beat by four beats per minute.

Webster is self-employed. For the rest of us, who work and commute upwards of ten hours per day, adding another three hours in just preparing and eating food, and two more working out, would leave maybe an hour or two for everything else – including naps.

But if you want to be the sexiest lawyer alive, you’re just going to have to make the time.
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Nick Roumel is a principal with Nacht & Roumel, PC, a firm in Ann Arbor specializing in employment and civil right litigation. He also has many years of varied restaurant and catering experience, has taught Greek cooking classes, and writes a food/restaurant column for “Current” magazine in Ann Arbor. Follow him at @nickroumel.